News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1887-01-06
RUSSIA'S PETROLEUM KINGS.
Something AbOut the Great Firm that Con-
trolls The MuscOviie Oil Trade.
From the N. Y. SUM-

The cable despatch last week report
ing that the Standard Oil Company in
tended to buy the oil interests of Noble
Bros. of Russia did not look plausible,
and was promptly denied in this city.
If it were true it would indeed be note
worthy news, for Noble Bros are the
kings of the Russian petroleum industry
1t was they who revOlutionized the oil
business at Baku, and made the Caspian
petroleum a formidable rival of the
American product.
The Noble family are Swedes, and
they have a remarkable record. The
father invented torpedo which he sold
to Russia for large sum of money. His
son Alfred, an experimental chemist, is
famous as the inventor of dynamite.
Two other sons, Ludwig and Albert.
created the petroleum industry of Baku
in its present enlarged form. Eleven
years ago, when they went to Baku, the
town and its oil refneries were scarcely
known. This is what the Mobiles did to
make Baku and its petroleum famous.
Oil at that time was delivered to the
refneries from the wells, twelve miles
distant, in OK carts. The Mobiles started
old fogies by building pipe line, and
to-day there are sixty miles of pipe and
and an average daily discharge of 2, 000,
900 gallons of crude oil at Baku. Their
second reform was an improved method
of boring which doubled the weld of oil.
Their third innovation Yves to build cis-
tern steamers on the Caspian, which car
ried the refined product in bulk up the
great Volga River, thus superseding the
clumsy and expensive system of transport
in barrels Now oil is constantly being
pumped on board Nobel Brothers steam
ers at Baku, and the entire load of 90, =
O00 gallons is shipped in four and half
hours
Then the Mobiles organized system
for the cheap transportation of their oil
far and wide in Europe. The product
is pumped from the cistern steamers in
to tank cars, each carrying ten tons of
OIL This one firm is now constantly
running sixty oil trains, with twenty
five cars in each train. Their fifth inno-
vation was also a startling novelty.
During the winter months no oil can
be carried into Russia over the frozen
VoIga. This is the very time of course
when the greatest quantity of oil is
needed. The Mobiles therefore built in
various parts of the empire twenty six
great storage-depots which are so large
that they will hold Russia's entire oil
supply for year. In the summer these
depots are filled with oil which is dis
tributed by car loads during the winter
months all over the empire. The Mobiles
oil is sold largely in Germany, and in
Russia the firm is now selling "a, 900, 900
gallons a year.
Here is an illustration of the perfect
system to which these men have reduced
their great business. In their office at
ST. Petersburg hangs large scale map
of the Russian empire. 1t is the business
of one of the clerks to mark on these
maps with little flags the position of all
the oil trains in accordance with the
telegraphic information he is constantly
receiving The members of the firm are
theIefore able a. a moment to tell the
exact position of ouch of their sixty oil
trains.